ABSTRACT
Any argument consists of statements. In this chapter and the next we will be learning how to represent statements in a way that makes it easy to manipulate them, 'adding them up' to arrive at conclusions. Our task here is similar to the task we once had of learning 'the language of mathematics'. As a first step we learned how to represent numbers like seven hundred and thirty-one and nine thousand six hundred and ninety-eight as 731 and 9,698. Using arabic notation made it easy for us to add these numbers in a mechanical way to get 10,429 as the sum. Analogously we wi~ be learning a logical language, in which we represent statements in a notation that permits us to 'reckon' with them to derive conclusions from them in a mechanical way. Particular affirmations like 'some farmer is a citizen' and 'Tom is a citizen' have a very simple structure so we begin with them.
